


Atonement

by Terra (terrayn)



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, dark themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-26
Updated: 2010-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-07 13:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terrayn/pseuds/Terra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He counts meals because they don't let him have calendars in Azkaban.</i></p><p>Draco isn't interested in being redeemed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Atonement

**Author's Note:**

> First Place in the dramionedrabble community's Easter Angst Challenge.
> 
> Written for the prompt: "Death is not the greatest of evils; it is worse to want to die, and not be able to." -Sophocles

He counts meals because they don't let him have calendars in Azkaban.

They take away his quill after they catch him drawing rivulets of red across his wrists. They confiscate everything else after he tries to hang himself. They steal his only book out of spite.

But he's already finished Snape's journal. Who knew the greasy-haired traitor had a sentimental streak? Years. That's how long Snape hides hate and love and fear behind mercurial eyes and shifting intent, confessing only to thin sheets of parchment.

_Death is not the greatest of evils_, Snape quotes some ancient Muggle playwright.

Fucking blood traitor.

Snape lied for years. Draco is exhausted smiling for his mother. She sees him every week; he wishes she would forget him. Her pity and his shame clog up his throat until he can't speak a bleeding word. When she's gone, he vomits the things he can't say. His sick tastes and smells acrid, like fear.

_He is as arrogant as his git of a father. But his eyes . . . he has Lily's eyes_, Snape writes.

Disgusting Mudblood lover.

His only other visitor is Mudblood Granger. She comes, spews out rubbish about pardons and hearings in clipped tones, and he sits staring at a point above her head. He thinks about her eyes. They're brown, like mud. Dirty and foul. He imagines what her parents might look like. Just as uninteresting and plain as Granger, he bets. Funny, it's the first time he thinks about where Mudbloods come from, whether they have parents.

"Do you look like your parents?" he asks impulsively.

Her eyes narrow. Still brown. "What?"

"Your parents, do you look like them?"

She purses her lips, squinting in suspicion. "Why do you care?"

"Fuck, Granger. It's just a question. I'm not asking you to draw a bloody picture so I can hire someone to off them."

Her fingers tighten until her knuckles are white but her body is unnaturally still, except her eyes – they're not brown anymore. Maybe it's the way sunlight, streaming in from the crater they call a window, hits her squarely in the face or how she's thrumming with agitation despite her queer artificiality. But they're glowing and her irises are browner than brown. They're some kind of liquid gold and Draco can't help staring in fascination.

"No. My mum's a blonde and my dad has green eyes," she says flatly, standing up, moving out of the light.

And just like that the spell is broken; she's plain, muddy Granger again. Draco nods, satisfied.

_Dumbledore lectures me that the son should not be punished for his father's sins. But Potter is a coward, a glutton for attention, insolent_, Snape scratches furiously.

He and his mother are last to see Lucius. Malfoys don't do public spectacles, she tells him. But he thinks it's because there would be more accusers than well-wishers. A line of victims winding all the way around the cemetery.

Still, his father was a great man. Harsh but principled. Draco learns happiness on his knee at three. He learns fear from the end of his cane at six. He learns shame in his silences at eight.

Draco is a bully, a coward, an ingrate. He learns loathing, slicing inwards like shrapnel from the momentum of an explosion, when he doesn't get the highest marks, make enough of the right friends, impress any pureblood scions. After he can't best Potter in Quidditch, doesn't score higher than Granger on tests, won't beat Weasley in a fair fight. The self-loathing cuts, so he flings it outwards.

Draco is a racist, a bigot, a perpetrator of hate crimes. Seeing Muggle-borns quiver in his presence makes him feel strong. Leaving girls crying makes him feel loved. Clawing at the chinks in the armor of his betters takes the edge off, blunts the jagged truth that he _will never be_ good enough.

Draco learns hate after his father is incarcerated at fifteen. He and his mother are defenseless, and she sinks into the quicksand of his aunt's madness. Voldemort returns – all rejoice their great liberator. But Draco mustn’t exalt in his presence, mustn’t feel pride in the association; instead he must cower, prostrate in fear – and he does. Because he is the man in the family now and blood is thicker than childhood and sanity.

_His obsession with Potter consumes him. There is no accounting for the actions of a madman. He has his eye on young Malfoy_, Snape scrawls hesitantly.

Draco doesn't experience true fear until he is sixteen. Congratulations, he has something in common with house-elves he's kicked and children he's threatened. Terror doesn't discriminate; it churns even in pure veins. He must kill the Headmaster – can’t think of him as Dumbledore. He forgets classes, assignments, food; remembers only murder and blood and guilty. Then he finds a way to not fail. He lives and breathes the Vanishing Cabinet until its every contour is etched onto his skin, beneath his eyelids.

But when it is his chance, _his _word that will finally mean something to a great man, he fails again. With Dumbledore's full attention for the first time, the only time, all he sees is an old man, exhausted and sick and weak. Draco knows what it feels like to crave sleep and succor so badly that even death seems a relief. He falters.

_Of all things . . . why must I kill him? Is there no end to his insufferable tasks and secrets? The boy must suspect nothing_, Snape writes in anguish.

Draco never suspects. Snape is his mentor, his only ally in a madman's prison of lies and deceit and insurmountable power. His betrayal is unforgivable. _Never trust anyone who isn't family_, his father said._Never love anything more than it loves you_, his mother said.

At home, Voldemort reigns, his father cowers and his mother cries. Then one night, the three people he dreads most appear. It is Potter, Weasley, Granger but if he says – if he tells the truth then they will die and he will be forced to watch and point and jeer. Like all those people Voldemort slaughtered, executed some call it. But what was their crime?

He mumbles, tries to nod and shake his head at the same time. Aunt Bella's beady black eyes scrape his face; he swallows the rancid taste of fear down with nothing but air. She swishes her wand and Granger screams, limbs flung out, locking as she seizes, fingers gnarled. He squeezes his eyes shut and hates her for screaming.

_It is worse to want to die, and not be able to_, Snape signs his last entry.

This, he understands.

Draco wonders why Granger keeps visiting. It can't be his charm (he never speaks), his good looks (he’s a wasteland of bruises, bones, veins), his money (she's incomprehensible like that), or innocence (he isn't). He thinks maybe she's one of those women who writes to convicts because they're lonely and need to be needed and scared of dying alone.

"What?"

He repeats: "I'm sorry."

Her eyes flutter impossibly wide. Still brown. "For what?"

"For – for being a bastard. For calling you names. For not saying I didn't recognize you."

Granger nods slowly. "Is that it?"

Draco laughs. He is pouring out his soul and the unappreciative bint wants to know if _that's it_. "I'm sorry I never thanked you for saving my life or saving the whole goddamned world or for killing that snake bastard."

"And?" she prompts, her eyes keen to tell him something.

He frowns. "Give me something to write with and I'll give you an exhaustive list. Save us both time."

"No," she refuses, clenching her quill. He realizes suddenly that she never leaves anything behind, even after he spends hours staring blankly at her books, her bag, her papers. If she truly hates him then why hasn't she slipped him something with a sharp edge?

"I . . . ," he grits his teeth, "I'm sorry that . . . I tried to kill myself to take the easy way out . . . instead of serving the full length of my punishment."

Granger looks astonished. "Malfoy, you think that's why I'm here?"

"Well, isn't it?" he snaps.

"I came to teach myself how to forgive. Because I'm still living it and I can't – it won't let me move on."

"What won't?"

"You. Voldemort. Death Eaters."

"Fear," he breathes. This, he understands. The way terror carves into someone, death by a thousand cuts; his body is a map of scars engraved by fear.

"When I heard you . . . had tried to kill yourself, I thought maybe we could learn together."

Draco presses himself against the bars, as close to freedom as he has been in months. "I'm still a prejudiced prick."

Granger smiles. "Thank god. I don't know that wizardkind could recover from a well-mannered Malfoy."

It surprises him that she keeps shifting in degrees and he can't remember when he stopped resenting her. Her coming and going is a filter, something that clears his mind until some feelings become impossible to revive.

Maybe that's the point; that's what forgiveness is. It’s not something only granted to the deserving. Maybe forgiveness is meant for those who need it most and the brave survivors who need to give it.

Some playwright said, _it is worse to want to die, and not be able to_. Draco thinks that there is nothing better than wanting to live.

He reaches through the bars, his hand jutting awkwardly between them.


	2. No One Left

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione thinks about the meaning of the word "Mudblood."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First Place in the dramionedrabble community's Easter Angst Challenge.
> 
> Written for the prompt: "A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent." -Elie Wiesel
> 
> The poem paraphrased at the end is "First They Came...," most often attributed to Martin Niemöller.

The first time he calls her "Mudblood," she doesn't understand Ron's instinctive fury or the shocked gasps. All she knows is that Malfoy's face is mottled with rage and humiliation and it makes her feel triumphant.

But Hermione learns, it is what she does best, and the word mutates into an insult. The last defense of a bully who isn't clever or interesting enough to retaliate fairly. She brushes it off.

The next time he calls her "Mudblood," it's more than a sneer because the sky is raining skulls and serpents and people are screaming, fleeing from black shadows and jets of light aimed to kill.

The word itself is inert, harmless. A logical fallacy - how can blood be muddy? But when faceless specters attack nameless Muggles for sport and call it cleansing, she understands the slur's true meaning. It is the same indifference that raped a continent in the name of colonialism, the same hatred that forced men and women and children to sew yellow stars on threadbare linen, the same ignorance that fed cheering mobs as men in white hoisted black men into nooses.

He tells her, "Granger, they're after Muggles."

They're coming to gas you, lynch you, line you up against a wall and pound lead into your skull.

He jeers. "If you think they can't spot a Mudblood, stay where you are."

They can see the taint in the pigment of your face, the heresy in the sanctity of your faith, the threat in your dreams of a different fate.

He taunts. "Oh yeah, I forgot, you're a Mudblood, Granger, so ten for that."

This is how it begins, she thinks. A taste of heady power that corrupts. Inquisitorial Squad, Khmer Rouge, Third Reich.

He promises, "They'll be the first to go, now the Dark Lord's back! Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers first!"

It always starts small. Disdain because they look, talk, act, think differently. Apathy because it isn't you. Obedience because it's too late to protest.

The last time he calls her "Mudblood," he is about to kill a defenseless man who uses his last moments to refute an offensive word.

Fear of the name only increases fear of the thing itself, Dumbledore has always said. This, Hermione knows above all else. Words have power: it only takes one syllable to change a spell, and only one syllable to decide the victim. It's the difference between pure and mud, white and black, man and woman.

Hermione isn't afraid of the name. She didn't grow up hearing it, and it doesn't make her quiver in anger or shrink in shame. But it makes her think that people aren't really so different.

She remembers silent sobs behind clenched fists, hiding in the toilet while her class switches seats. Because no one ever wants to share desks with her. She remembers vicious satisfaction when the boy who steals her crayons turns into a rainbow of colors. It serves him right for being a bully. She remembers childish delight after casting her first spell. Incontrovertible proof that she is different, that she is special, that she is _better_. She laughs in their faces and imagines coming back one day to teach them shame and pain, the feelings she has choked on for so long.

No, Hermione realizes, people are the same everywhere.

Hearing _Mudblood _saddens her. Because racists and bigots aren't anything terrifying and unusual; they're neighbors and mothers and schoolmates.

The epithet seeps into her until she's proud to bear its mark. She _is _Muggle-born. She _is _a witch. She _is _stubborn and clever and magical. And no amount of ranting or threats can besmirch what she is.

Malfoy says, "I've got to do it! He'll kill me! He'll kill my whole family!"

And Hermione wants to tell him:

They came first for the Mudbloods,  
and you didn't speak up because you weren't a Mudblood.  
Then they came for the half-bloods,  
and you didn't speak up because you weren't a half-blood.  
Then they came for you,  
and by that time, there was no one left to speak up.


	3. Liquid Courage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione runs into Draco by Dumbledore's grave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First Place in the dramionedrabble community's Easter Angst Challenge.
> 
> Written for the prompt: "Courage is a kind of salvation." -Plato

The tomb is blinding white, smooth, a husk of marble.  
The day of the funeral, the lake is a still, glistening gold, the weather so beautiful it borders on blasphemy. _But Dumbledore was no god_, Hermione remembers thinking, clutching the rims of her metal chair. She wonders why it isn't rusting beneath her fingertips, why it isn't raining, hailing, rending a torrential hell on the hushed crowd gathered by the lake. Dumbledore is dead and the mourners grieve in neat little rows. The only thing honest is the earth's indifference.  
Even from the banks of the water, Hermione can hear the rowdy screams and shrieking laughter. A year later, Voldemort is dead and the living rejoice. Ron is inconsolable and Ginny clutches Harry with a tear-stained grip. Firewhiskey flows unabated and everyone is eager for the liquor to blunt the anguish that their loved ones are dead and burn out the guilt that they survived.  
By nightfall, she has screamed and laughed and sobbed until even grief is beyond reach.  
She slips out of the Great Hall, instinctively walking to the seductively calm lake. It's dark but a few steps more and a tomb rises out of the ground, blossoming from wreaths and flowers and notes heaped like coins in a vault. She realizes suddenly that she never mourned Dumbledore; after the ceremony, they were packed into trains and made to flee like death was contagious.  
She touches the tomb, runs her fingers along it. It's slippery, scraping cold and sleek under her hand - so unlike the man. Then she remembers Rita Skeeter and Aberforth and Ariana and wonders what she really knew about him. Was all the warmth and blazing hope an illusion?  
"Aren't you sloshed yet?" a voice drawls.  
Hermione has her wand trained on him in less than a breath. "Malfoy," she says, narrowing her eyes. "What are you up to?"  
Malfoy is a blur in the dark, pale and unfocused like a grimy photo. Shocks of white smear his forehead - his hair, she realizes. She's never seen it so disheveled, not Malfoy of the silk robes, ironed ties, unblemished skin. She quells the compulsion to brush it out of his face, like she would Harry or Ron, her fingers already splayed in midair. She crumples it into a fist instead.  
He comes closer until her wand collides with his chest. It digs into her palm but he keeps leaning until she's stabbing him over the heart. "What are you doing?" she demands.  
"This might be my last nighttime stroll," he answers with a flash of teeth. "What with being on the losing side and all."  
Then his fingers clench over her wrist and he jerks her off-balance in the same moment she cries, "_Stupefy_!"  
The red flare bursts futilely over his head, illuminating his eyes, dark slabs of grey, red lightning in the corners like he's been crying. But Hermione won't be fooled; she tightens her grip. He pulls her roughly into him, bony fingers grinding her wrists away from him. "I don't belong in there," he hisses.  
She shoves him back as hard as she can. "That is not my problem! You've made your bed . . . now lie in it!"  
Malfoy laughs hoarsely. "What is that? Some Muggle saying?"  
"What do you care?"  
"What do I care?" he repeats. He wrestles her closer until she can smell the firewhiskey on his breath. "I don't. Wasn't that the point of this fucked up war?"  
"The point," she retorts, "is that you're a racist prick who thinks less of us than mud under your shoe."  
"Yeah. I know." He seizes her neck, forces her head back until their eyes meet. "Look at me."  
"Why?" she counters.  
"Because I want to know what's so special about you. Are they all like you? Is that why we had to kill them . . . so they wouldn't show us up in marks and spells and intelligence?"  
Hermione struggles in his grip. "There _is no_ us and you. We're all the same!"  
"Is that right?" he says, his eyes flitting down to her mouth. "Are you sure?"  
"You've lost it, Malfoy. What's wrong with you? You're touching a Mudblood," she taunts, "don't you have to go drown yourself in soap now?"  
He crushes his eyes shut. "No. They're going to exile us, probably send me to Azkaban. Nothing matters anymore."  
"Then why are you-"  
Malfoy slams her against the tomb. "Don't you get it? I'm scared. I'm fucking scared!"  
Her heart pounding in her throat, she yells, "You deserve it!"  
Abruptly, he releases her and she slumps back, stunned. He falls to his knees and whispers, "I didn't want to . . . I hated him, you know."  
"Who?" she asks shakily.  
"The old man," he mutters, staring at the tomb, "he never paid me any attention."  
"That's why you-?"  
"But I couldn't kill him. Not like that. I've never killed anybody, did you know that?"  
"No, I-I didn't."  
"Drove Aunt Bella nuts. Some Muggle was going to be my first kill. Be a man, she said." Malfoy smiles bleakly. It's the first time he's ever smiled at her, a crooked red gash across his face, and it startles her more than everything else he's done because it's _genuine_. "Be a man. But I couldn't do it."  
"Malfoy," Hermione hesitates. "Why are you telling me this?"  
"I'm confessing. They're going to lock me up tomorrow and I'll never see you again. I-I'm . . . not brave, like you . . . and Potter. So I got to do it now. While I'm pissed," he laughs, his voice thin, desolate, "and two seconds from throwing up on you."  
"Malfoy. I - you should know. They don't have to be right about you."  
"No one can save us now. Maybe they'll let my mum go . . . but me and father? We're finished."  
"Malf - Draco," she fumbles over the syllables. "Bravery isn't only heroics. There's all kinds. This, right now? This is you being brave. You're the only one who can save you."  
"Yeah?" he says, with that same lopsided smile.  
Slowly, trembling, she reaches down and threads her fingers into his hair, brushing it out of his face. Hermione murmurs, "Courage is a kind of salvation."


	4. Remembrance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hermione finds Malfoy teetering on the edge of the Astronomy Tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Featured as story of month at the Petulant Poetess archive.
> 
> Written for the prompt: "Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer; the secret of redemption lies in remembrance." -Richard von Weizsaecker

Her footsteps echo in the winding column of stone stairs leading up to the Astronomy Tower. It's dark and the air is dank. After spending all morning in the sweltering heat, Hermione savors the coolness on her skin. Trailing her knuckles along the rough stones, a habit by now, she remembers countless climbs up this narrow space, crushed in a single file, listening good-naturedly to Ron and Harry grumbling.

Drifting at the memory, she misses the last stair and stumbles into the observatory, heart pounding in her throat. Her hand darts out for the rusting latch on the door to keep her balance, and she presses her sweaty face on the smooth wood in relief. That’s how she missed him at first, she thinks later.

Hobbling forward, she looks up and her sigh of annoyance mangles into a horrified gasp at the sight of Draco Malfoy on the ledge. Hermione chokes out: “What are you doing?”

Malfoy's head turns and he levels an imperious stare at her, brow puckered in mock confusion. “What does it look like?”

Hermione gapes at him like he’s an imbecile. A breeze whips his unbuttoned shirt around him and she stares at his bare back, curved as if bearing an invisible weight, and lingers on the nubs of his spine. He turns to face her and she can't help tracing the serrated pink scar that begins at the tip of a bony hip, searing diagonally across his chest, to end at a jutting collarbone. His arms are spread wide, even with his shoulders, fingers splayed like wings. 

Malfoy is teetering on the ledge of the Astronomy Tower, his head flung carelessly back, looking for all the world as if he were ready to leap – or take flight.

But his insolent tone jerks her back to familiar territory. “It looks like,” she grits, “you’re about to toss yourself over.”

“It does, I suppose.” Malfoy cocks his head. “Does that bother you?”

“Does that bother—” she sputters. “Are you raving mad? Get down from there! I am not going to let you,” she forces out the word, “_kill_yourself—”

“Ah. Typical Gryffindor charity then,” he responds, nodding. “It's sickening, really. You’d probably knit Pettigrew mittens instead of dancing on his grave, wouldn’t you?”

Hermione inches nearer, making her voice soft, soothing. “Listen, call it whatever you want, but I am not going to stand here and watch you throw away your life.”

“Why not?” he asks, his tone genuinely curious.

“B-because I just won’t!”

“You know . . . one of the Dark Lord’s favorite ways to kill Mudbloods was to Imperius them and force them to jump off roofs or impale themselves on swords and such,” he recalls casually, like he’s reciting a history lesson for Binns.

Hermione flinches but she doesn’t stop moving closer. “That’s horrid. It – it’s _evil_. I’m glad he’s dead.” She fights the urge to take out her wand, dangling loosely in her robe pocket, _Wingardium Leviosa_ on the tip of her tongue. Would she have enough time to catch him if she Stupefied him? She can’t risk it so she keeps talking to distract him. “I’m not all sacks of puppies and sunshine, you know. I’d dance on Voldemort’s grave. In fact, I’m planning to after you get down from there,” she holds out her hand, “why don’t we do it together?”

Malfoy’s grey eyes flicker down to her open palm then up her arm, tracing her face until his molten gaze is burning into her eyes, the desolate equanimity of his countenance slamming the air from her lungs. Suddenly, meeting his glare hurts and her eyes are prickling as if she’s been staring into the sun too long. But she doesn’t dare to look away; the moment is too fleeting, brittle enough that a blink is all it would take.

The appeal in his eyes – a plea that isn’t a plea, a question that isn’t a question – sends shivers down her spine and somehow, she knows that _this moment matters_. Her feelings are a roiling mess, impossible to bottle into words, so she wills her face to give him the answer he wants. Whatever he sees makes him stiffen in anger.

The hard planes of his face tighten until he’s glowering at her. “Stop looking at me like that, you stupid bint.”

“Like what?” she retorts vehemently, relieved that he’s released her from the desperate importance of whatever just passed between them.

“Like you give a damn.”

“I do!”

“Why?” he demands.

“Because I’m a better person than you!” she throws back. “I’ll probably leave Pettigrew flowers for saving Harry. I would stand between your mother and a Killing Curse. I would jump off this tower after you. Because I am a _good person_.”

Malfoy tosses his head back in a bark of laughter. “Granger, you are the dumbest smart person I’ve ever met.”

“I don’t care what you think of me!”

“Is that right? Don’t think I haven’t noticed why you’re so desperate to be teacher’s pet. It’s a nice consolation prize for having no female friends, isn’t it? I bet you tell yourself girls don’t like you because you’re too smart and they’re jealous that you’re friends with Scarface and Weasel when really . . . they just think you’re bloody annoying.”

“If you’re trying to goad me into pushing you off, it’s working.” Hermione’s outstretched hand clenches into a fist. “But by all means, insult the person who’s keeping you from offing yourself in a last bid plea for attention.”

“And the claws come out,” Malfoy sneers. “Let’s not fool ourselves here. You loathe me and I think you’re the most grating shrew to ever come out of Gryffindor. Quite impressive considering the House.”

“That’s rich coming from a sniveling coward who does everything daddy says and only has friends because you buy them,” she snaps.

“Who wouldn’t want to be friends with me?” he looks down his nose at her, “I’m pureblood, wealthy, good-looking. Whereas _you_are a Mudblood and the only thing remarkable about you is an uncanny resemblance to a beaver.”

“Really. Because Malfoy, from where I’m standing, you have nothing where it counts. Oh, not the things you were born with,” she scoffs, “or people gave you. Strip away your so-called pure blood and money and,” her eyes sweep over him distastefully, “passable looks and there is _nothing_redeemable about you.”

“Exactly.” Malfoy nods slowly, his lips stretched into a harsh smile, his grey eyes sharp and jagged. “Exactly. I couldn’t have said it better. I know I’m beyond redemption.”

Hermione stares at him in horror at being baited, flushing with shame that she's used familiar hate to escape the rioting emotions he’s awakened in her. She says shakily, “Malf—” but the rest comes out as an incoherent shriek when he turns to face the sky, knees bending, body swaying forward.

Hermione launches herself the few feet left between them and slams into his side, clutching his midriff. “You ungrateful cretin! How – how dare you!” she cries in his ear.

Malfoy snarls, “Let go of me.” His bony fingers dig into her arms but she tightens her hold, clenching handfuls of his shirt, shoving her forehead into his shoulder. “Granger, get off me!”

“No! You don’t like a Mudblood hugging you . . . well, I don’t care! This is your punishment for being so bloody _stupid_ and insane and—” Hermione swallows a sob, her vision starting to blur, the thought of watching him fall and fall until he hit the ground, his body bent in crooked angles, flashing over and over in her mind. She wipes her wet eyes furiously on his shirt.

“Are you crying?” he asks incredulously.

“Yes, and it’s all your fault, you bastard! Making me say those awful things. What if you’d really died!”

“Granger, I wasn’t going to jump,” he mutters, sagging against her. “I’m not suicidal.”

Hermione’s gasp of outrage is muffled by his back. “_What_?”

“I come up here to remember,” he sighs, “because short of Obliviating myself, I can’t forget that I planned to murder Dumbledore here. And I almost let my aunt kill you. And I let Crabbe die when it should’ve been me.”

“Th-that’s all?”

“Yes, that’s all. I force myself to stand here to remember how small I am, how much I still have to own up to. I swear.”

She isn’t sure she believes him so she lets go reluctantly but the moment she loosens her death grip, he turns in the circle of her arms and knocks them away. Hermione staggers back until she falls against cold stone. Malfoy flattens his hands on the wall above her shoulders, and he leans in until she can see his dilated pupils. He peers down at her with an odd, strained expression. “You stupid girl. Who said you could cry for me?”

“I can cry for whoever I want to,” she returns hotly, silently cursing the tears streaking down her face. But his shallow breaths are warm on her cheeks and she can’t hide her trembling from him.

Malfoy whispers, “Damn you,” and before she can shrink away, his lips are pressed against the corner of her mouth, moving in a caress as soft as petals blowing across skin. “Salty,” he murmurs, his dark lashes grazing her cheek.

Hermione’s face explodes with heat. “M-Malfoy, wha—”

“Shut up,” he breathes, resting his head against hers. “I’m savoring the moment. I want to remember you like this. Trying to save my life, crying for me.”

“Malfoy, I-I was wrong earlier.” Hermione raises a quivering hand to his hair, cradling the back of his head, marveling at the contrast between her tanned skin and the bone white strands. “You’re not unredeemable. This right now, refusing to forget the hurtful things, making new memories with me, _this_is redemption."

"Draco,” at his name, she feels his pulse leap in his chest, “redemption begins with remembering.”


	5. Confessions, It's That Time of Year Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Birthdays are never easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the dramionedrabble community's "Celebrate Draco Malfoy's Birthday Drabble-a-thon."
> 
> Used the prompt: "Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you have not committed." -Anthony Powell

It’s funny what they say about old age. 

“People are like wine,” some sycophant slurs in my ear, “they only get better with age.” Or worse: “Age doesn’t matter unless you're a cheese!” some other fool tells me, swaying like a weed (the nasty kind you wished would mind its own business and stay out of your garden), clutching a butterbeer that I’ll wager the Manor is _not_ butterbeer.

Bloody. Fantastic. I’m being serenaded by the perpetually shitfaced and toady hangers-on. Aren’t there any other blasted bars in England? It almost makes one miss Crabbe and Goyle. And _that_ should tell you just how bleeding depressed I am.

It’s all a lot of rubbish anyway. The next idiot who tells me that my birthday is a special time to celebrate the gift of ME to the world is getting hexed. Violently and virulently. That sound? That’s me retching on the sobbing train wreck using my sleeve as a hankie. Do I look like a bloody tissue to you? Goddamn emotional drunks. I _do not care_ about your arthritis or bed sores, you blithering moron, and _good god_man, put that away!

Yes, that’s me retching some more. If you didn’t know, I’m allergic to tears. Get ill. Very.

My take on the whole aging thing? Getting old’s like death by drowning. I’m sure it can be quite delightful, you know, once you’ve stopped struggling. But until then? I hear choking and thrashing are popular. Need to work on my breaststroke anyway. What are you looking at me like that for? I’m extending the _metaphor_, you daft bint.

Oh, right on time, there’s that pursing of the lips you do. Like a psychotic nun up to your ears in maidenly virtue (hear being a virgin is cranky business), and oh, there it is, now you’re narrowing those big brown eyes at me. This doesn’t bode well. Don’t tell me you’re hiding a pickaxe or something dreadfully sharp behind your back. I’ve seen that movie (at your behest, I might add).

“Do you have any idea how many bars I’ve been in tonight?” you snap, shoulders rigid and red welling in your cheeks. A more perfect picture of ruffled hen I’ve never encountered.

Ow! Guess I said that one out loud. You are, without a doubt, a maniac, and – and _violent_. No wonder Weasel tossed you back. Loads of other more compliant birds in the pond. Ow! Okay, those looks of death? Not just for show; there’s _follow-through_. Dammit, woman, it’s my sodding birthday. I can’t even catch a break on the one day of the year God meant me to be worshipped—Ow! Ow!—all right, _all right_, the one day of the year polite people are supposed to pretend they like the fact that I’m still breathing. Clearly, you do not number among them.

“You have no idea the trouble you’re in,” you rant and rave and do that thing where you poke me until I’m black and blue, “breaking out all the patients from the Janus Thickey Ward, how could you? You’re lucky that nobody decided to walk into the street because, gee, I don’t know, the shiny cars are pretty or something. It would’ve been on your head if anyone got themselves _run over_—”

I tune you out. Not easily done, to be sure, but it’s mighty funny watching you puff up, your wild shrub of hair flailing this way and that. Like a silent movie (yes, I saw those for you, too) or a show on the telly on mute. Wish I’d learned this handy trick back in our school days – god, how long ago was that? Twenty—thirty years? I’ve done a gravy job forgetting.

My philosophy? Growing old’s like being increasingly punished for a crime you didn’t commit. And I’ve committed loads, so I’d know. So what if I let the mad hatters out of St. Mungo’s permanent ward? How else am I to get together a suitable crush for my birthday party? Malfoys deserve only the best, especially of the boozing variety – and you know, all that tripe. They never serve us anything alcoholic, which I'm blaming you for, by the way.

Ow! Yes, I’m _listening_. I’m hurt that you're so suspicious. This is my pensive, listening face, I’ll have you know. Not to be confused with my bored, bugger off face. What do you mean this is the end of the line? _What_ line?

"I can’t – _god_, Draco. I don’t know if I can keep doing this with you. People are talking and if they find out that I’ve been—that we’re,” you swallow convulsively and claw handprints into the wooden counter, “that I’ve been giving you special treatment, they’ll sack me. You know this can’t work. I can’t keep covering up for you. I’d – I’d like to think we’ve become friends and—”

Did you know, Granger? Your eyebrows crinkle together and your eyes flit about every time you lie. Every fucking time. How do _I_ know? I’ve got this mental sketch of you that I carry around everywhere. On nights when it’s not your shift and the Ward’s dark and that barking mad Lockhart won’t shut it, I take it out, spread it open behind my eyelids, and I count every lash, trace every dimple, smooth that rebellious curl behind your ear. I fall asleep staring into your muddy, dirty, brown eyes.

So I know. I know when you’re bloody lying. And you’re doing it now. But _why_, why now?

“I know this is hard for you. I mean,” you laugh helplessly, wringing your hands until even I’m wincing, “nobody likes getting old. But forty-five’s not so bad. It took me some getting used to, too. And well, it’s like a – a set of dress robes that are too small. The first couple of days, it’s so tight it hurts to breathe. But then, you fill it out, stretch it until it fits. And then,” you gesture wildly at my chest, still not looking at me, “then you get over it.”

I don’t want to fucking get over it. You’re like this disease (did you think I was joking about those virulent hexes earlier?). I've got this memory from when I was four, playing in my mum's garden. I skinned my knee something vicious and it soaked up the dry soil, dyed it crimson. Stung so bad I was howling. That's when my grandfather—good old Muggle-hating Abraxas—tutted and told me, “That's what the mud’ll do to you, boy.”

I was physically ill with shame the first time you outscored me, did you know that? You still make me nauseous. And the hesitant way you're looking at me now—finally_ looking_ at me—worrying your lip like that, god, I want it back. It was simple, the clean pure hate. Drawing lines in the sand, me here, you there. Blood, so much blood in-between. You’re throwing me away, aren't you? Abandoning me like everybody else. I'm not man enough for you. I never was, was I?

_Damn you_, listen to me!

It wasn’t my fucking fault Crabbe Sr. tortured me until I lost my fucking mind. I suppose I deserve it, though. It’s on me that Vincent's dead. If he hadn’t been my lackey, fallen in too deep to get out, then he'd still be around, chasing Bulstrode’s skirts—bloke never had any taste, I’m sorry to say. There it is. I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry that if you wanted me to pitch myself in front of those damned cars you’re always harping on about, I'd do it. I'd do anything for you, don't you know?

No, I guess you don’t. Because you're gathering up your coat and wiping at your eyes. Why? Since when have I ever been worth tears to you?

“Draco,” you say, “I'm going to go now. This – this is goodbye.”

If you go I’ll kill myself, I want to tell you. But I don’t.

Because you’ve been my hostage for too long, so long that even you’ve realized it, bleeding heart Gryffindor that you are. It’s been years since that first day you marched into the Ward with those brisk steps that are always _going somewhere_, no aimless pacing for you, not when there are still so many people waiting for you to compassion them to death. But here's a secret. You don't belong here, cozying up with death and the dying, and really, what's the difference? You’re meant to be outside, in the arms of ginger-haired nancyboys and smothered by little babies you’ll have with some great bloke someday. Just please, no speccy gits. I know I’ve taught you better than that.

White-washed walls, bars and madness aren't for you. You’re too brown for all this desolate white. You're autumn, the scent of a pile of leaves and the gold seeping into everything; you’re the season that makes people want to find someone to live out all this dying with them.

And it's you. You're that someone for me. I don’t want to be together with you until death do us apart, or some load of romantic bollocks like that. I want to live for you. To live _with_ you, because you make waking up to that next birthday worth it. I want—

Oh bugger it, I said that out loud, didn’t I? Well, I've never been any good at this selfless, heroic crap anyway. That gaping look on your face? Not flattering, my dear. I'm not, you know, declaring myself or some shit like that, so you can stop crying and clutching at me like a romance heroine with leaky tear ducts and low blood sugar.

I'm no Dracy or whatever the bloke's name is (you made me read that, too).

You shouldn’t get any ideas, Hermione. I’ll only disappoint—you barbarian, you bit me! Well, that’s one way to shut me up.


End file.
